Swing from Hell (DavusHypatia)
by Ark Q
Summary: I stay quiet for a moment. I stare at them, my throat getting dusty all of a sudden. They stare me back, little surprised, little interested, and I know that they cannot understand. I don't either. Truth is it has been years since I last pronounced that name without getting across the Hell. "Hypatia…" [Agora]


**Swing from Hell**

Lady, were you feeling my eyes? Did you know you had been watched?

Lady, can you tell me of the first time you asked you father why the stars shine? Can you remember if my lips tasted like fear and did you manage to trust me when I called our names aloud giving them no classes, no power, no duties and no breath?

Lady, do you know who will it hurt the most? Can you promise me, after you, I will still be able to love?

Lady: can you speak?

As soon as I let my foot fall on the first step- here I was, submitted by a vibrating sun, filthy, buttoned in my uniform of righteous and tired, again, of having no words- I realized I wouldn't get an answer to any of these questions anymore.

That cut me into two.

"Davus…"

"What?" I turned back, scouring away my thoughts with a blink and an ashamed smile.

Everything emerged just too quickly: the soft sly prattle, the greyish warmth that paints the whole room in autumn, the night, the ropes, the vinegary stink of wine. And my beautiful unaware sons who're playing ball under the moon. I stand up from the border of the backyard. My wife gets closer and fills my glass with such a visibly irritated face that I feel the need to nod, quietly: of course I haven't forgotten how much the company I have invited to my house this evening is important to my whole family.

I take a seat with a half-smile. "Please excuse myself, I was… Well, what were you saying?"

"They asked you if you remember that day, Davus."

"Which day."

"See? I knew he doesn't are about none of this."

"…I don't believe it, he must remember…"

"Which one, I said."

I must be funny, because they're laughing now. Sprawled across the triclinium, tied to his red wine and lost in the tray of sweets, an old rich philosopher whose name I both don't and don't want to remember decides to elegantly way in the conversation. "I don't think that's possible." he declares, a tone that tastes like lemon. "Who doesn't care about this stuff nowadays? Come on!, we're talking about the day that philosopher died…You know, that scientist, the woman: what was her name? Come on, Davus, I bet you remember. How was…? Marcus, do you remember…? What was her name?"

_Hypatia._

My God how many words you made me thread into the cracks of silence.

_Hypatia._

Still, you must have known this was not the way to teach people how to love. You dragged us on our knees in front of a wrong lesson, all of us: me, you, Orestes. Teacher of illusions? Maybe this is the way it would be better to remember you.

_Hypatia._

I stay quiet for a moment. I stare at them, my throat getting dusty all of a sudden. They stare me back, little surprised, little interested, and I know that they cannot understand. I don't either. Truth is it has been years since I last pronounced that name without getting across the Hell.

"Hypatia…"

"Hypatia!, that's it. What a sad story." The philosopher shook his head, very dramatically. "Just the other day I was hanging around in the Agora to meet Lisander- you know, my dear friend from Syracuse, - and I caught a man there talking about it. I swear, you should have heard what beautiful words he had for that woman. He told us he does not believe at all the rumours…You know, the rumours that say she was murdered, oh no, he is convinced she has killed herself…"

"No!"

Temple.

My voice had shouted even before realizing what it would have done with their attention.

Temple.

That damn temple was shivering. Gradually sharpening together with the cold of the cross that was towering above us, it remained mute. Leaving us there, nailed to its cowardly silence. "Don't stain you hands"…hands? after hands…?! I…"…of impure blood."

Right all on me. In less than three seconds they'd jumped right all on me. Their damned eyes.

I was sick of bearing their stupid black faces, while my mind was grinding ideas so fast that I was failing to keep up with it; impossible to listen to the tickling of thoughts and, beneath the whirring of my broken breath, I captured just echoes of half words, none of them useful to really calm me down. I must had gone totally mad. That was insane. What was I supposed to do? What…?

Even if I wanted to, I could no believe what the run of seconds was telling about the blood that was going to dirty my whole destiny for eternity.

"I stay with her, come one, go. I stay with her."

"…so incredibly well hidden, really, left to such a total obscurity that there were no doubts it had been a plan concocted by Cyril to avoid bad advertisement. No? Am I right? What do you think, Davus."

Again, I don't answer. I'm victim of a indefatigable, unstoppable, never-ending swing of memories. I don't even feel my wife tapping on my shoulder. She's whispering something in my ear while the philosopher keeps on talking and talking and pressing and judging: "…Because sure at a certain point it gets spontaneous to wonder…"

"…listen, please, don't listen…"

"…What must have been running through the heads of those bastards who took her life? What?"

I've grabbed my wife's hand to say it's okay, but it's not okay at all. I do listen to those words and before realizing it I've crashed against a twirl of thoughts I didn't succeed in erasing from the back of my heart.

_Damn you_.

You've never wanted me in your life and now you're demanding I suddenly sink up to my neck in your bloody death? How much more you want me to love you? Ho much? Tell me, are you collecting the times I can't tear out from my head the libidinous infamy of waiting for noting but slipping my tongue between you lips? Are you storing my sighs, my prayers, the hopes that root my flesh to a pain so acute and so unbearably sweet that I don't know if it is my blood or your smell running here through my veins.

I'm not a philosopher, Hypatia, you know that. I haven't done nothing but imploring each minute of this cursed life for your holy gaze. And now that I have it right against my eyes I find it hard not to scream. You have consumed my soul making me dream of you while you were letting my fingers slide along your skin. But not now. Not here.

The air was in flames, I wasn't even breathing.

Everything went so far. I was holding her cheek in my hands, afraid to watching if flying away. When I nodded- because I did nod, oh yes, with the heart in my ears and the rage that was drawing tears up to my neck- I couldn't think of anything but how I was going to convince my fingers to stop trembling that hard.

I was breathing life into her ears, knowing that there was no exit way, that I had to give up, that each of us hadn't been lucky enough to see their own dream spared and I kept on asking myself what I did wrong to find myself in that temple giving her death. If there was God preying me to do it, I wanted to see him, oh yeah!, _kneel_ in front of me folded-handed. Or that at least He came count with me the price that the Universe was going to pay selling her ash out so soon.

"Davus, do you know how she died?"

Tottering fingers. Sullen coarse buzzing.

_You will close her eyes._

…until imprinting the shape of her lips on my clammy palm…

_How will you say her goodbye?_

…because crying is not enough to wipe off the beauty of her smile from my mind…

_How will you let her go?_

…living, fighting, crying, breathing…Could this be really our last day?

_Where were you when you was still able to save her?_

And her spirit was sliding away in drops. It was stilling quietly from under my fingers, stealing away two dreams and a handful of hours wasted to fulfil them. I was hoping she would refuse to die. I was practically foreseeing it: why wouldn't she? Such a sharp unrivalled intellect that fails to realize that no answers were waiting for her where I was chucking her out and so what, lady?, what do you want now?, what do you think you'll get, selling your soul this cheap? Here is coming the last silence, and from you not even a whine. If you're listening, shout! Cry! For God' sake: _fight_! Are you telling me you enjoy this end? Lady, is this how you expected it? Do you think it is all you deserve?

We fools. You made us all believe you were a star.

_Oh Davus, where do you find the courage to hate your only love?_

I didn't know if I could ever forgiven her. Even today, I'm not really sure I have.

When I collapsed on the ground along her, blind from tears, bloodless by the terror of hurting her again, killed by her death, I thought that God didn't deserve to have her by His side in that moment. Between the two, I was still the man who'd given everything just to feel her in his arms.

"You wanna tell me what you're doing."

"I'm watering down the wine."

"Don't play with me, you know exactly what I'm talking about."

I don't need to look at her and I don't need to answer. My wife is one of those rare women who settle for little, very little, even for silence. Our marriage relies on this.

The chatter has gone one room further. Silent, I keep on working.

"Now listen to me, Davus." she sighs, letting her short fingers lean gently on my arm. "Those men are here for you, are here to give you the possibility to be someone. Do you understand that? This isn't a joke, they're here to give us the future we've always dreamt of. Can you imagine where we are in barely two years, if those people decide right now to back you up? Can you? We are this close, _this_ close, to get everything we always wanted: bigger house, more slaves, the respect we deserve after coming from bottom to the top of this freaking society but…" Another sigh. "But you must promise. I beg of you please, _promise_ you will keep you mouth shut. Please. For me, do it for me."

"…I don't have choice."

"Of course you do!" she barks and she burns. "Fine: what do you think is going to happen? Tell me. Do you believe they'll still open their pockets, after knowing what you did? Do you believe they will let one of the parabolani come to power while they're still there? Come on Davus, you listened to them, you must have noticed the level of their hypocrisy. They've built a model of all human virtues on that woman when it was their _silence_ to send you in that temple that day! Or maybe you hope for Cyril to pop up from the rug like 'My bad, be cool with him: he's clean'. You'd love that, wouldn't you?

Oh yeah you can choose. You have the choice to believe me when I tell you that you're not guilty. Look at me, honey: _you. Are. Not. Guilty_. You're a good man, who happened to be at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Stop torturing yourself. Enough, Davus, please."

"I'm really sorry."

I apologize before getting stopped by her last try. She is so scared, and so angry. She doesn't understand. "Our kids, Davus, think about our kids."

"I said I'm sorry."

"I'm begging you, think…Think about the future you would be able to give to our kids if you only managed to finally leave the past behind."

"I didn't want to make this fall back on you." I admit. "I will find a way to let you and the kids out of any consequence..."

"Oh so this is your big solution."

"This is the only solution that I see."

"Then you got blind."

"Why can't you understand it?"

"That you're gonna ruin your future because of one stupid woman of your past?"

I finally overtake her.

As a matter of fact, I'm really not thinking about my kids.

I'm not thinking about them while I come back to the room, while I leave her alone with her fear and her helpless anger. I'm not thinking about them while I rise the chalice, while I clear my throat imposing silence on the pathetic river of incalculable bullshit those men are pouring in the hall of my house.

I'm freighted, I'm miserable. I'm exhausted. But I'm not thinking about them or about everything I'm destroying while I let the guilt set itself free from the atrocious performances I have joined as one of the greatest actors.

Their faces get second by second more crumpled, their eyes look suspicious even before my words begin to crack. Someone suddenly stand up, another starts talking on me. There's who freezes, who bursts in laughs, there's who wants me to stop and who pushes me to speak.

And while I finish my speech, this is what I think about: I consider that, at the end, what I most regret is that I'll never be able to understand if Hypatia knew to be the craziest of all religions.

…and it keeps on moving: forward, backward, forward, backward, forward…My eternal swing from Hell…

**A/N:**

**Please please please correct my English! I'm not a native speaker and I tend to force the grammar, so I look forward to comments and corrections!**

6


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